Persistence of vision helicopter blades with RGB LEDs

The two blades are attached to the heli just as any other whirlygig. The electronics, though, are mounted underneath the blade with a battery pack. We covered a build last year that demonstrated weight added to a spinning blade won’t tear everything apart, but that build used only blue LEDs. This build is full color and makes us feel like we’re living in a cyberpunk future populated by Recognizers and Daft Punk.

The images are stored on an SD card that receives data from a USB port. The microcontroller is a PIC32, and from what we can assume from the schematics, the RPM of the blades is measured by an on-board hall effect sensor (don’t quote us on that, though). There’s no hope of a commercial release from [BOcnc], though. He can’t find anyone to manufacture the blades, and the entire build was too expensive. It sure looks pretty though, so check out the video of it after the break.

Really cool. But, uh,as constructively as I can: How often are you *over* a helicopter’s blades?

The builder could consider a system to fit under the blades of full size helicopters, that display a logo. That’s a bit more challenging because as well as rotor speed you also have the body f the copter in the way.

This is very cool, just imagine this incorporated on real choppers.
A giant hello kitty in the sky nice!
But more practical a police chopper with messages for the crooks they are chasing, ‘halt!’ or even a beacon to tell ground units where they are.